Tree planting programs: another form of greenwash?

(Is embedding tree seeds in cardboard a good idea, or just another round of greenwash?)

We hear a great deal about programs to encourage us to plant a tree.  It always sounds good, because most of us love trees, appreciate their value to us emotionally and ecologically, and understand the importance of wood and paper products that come from trees.  But when I scratch the surface of the suggestion to plant more trees for the environment, I find it is more confusing than amusing.

The supposition in these tree-planting programs seems to be that by planting a tree seedling or tree seed that we are rebuilding our forests.  But for this to be correct, it matters where you plop the baby tree, and what species it is that you are plopping.  Most ecologists are completely convinced that we should encourage vegetation native to a particular region to grow in that region.  I have often lamented in this blog the invasion of our local habitats by non-native plants.  So when someone gives you a tree seed and tells you to plant it, you need to know what species it is and if that species is indigenous to your area.

This week on Treehugger I read about a new "invention" where tree seeds are embedded in cardboard boxes.  When you are finished with the box, you bury the cardboard and a tree grows in that location.  Apparently, the company, which is called Life Box, has chosen tree seeds that are native to every major region of the country.  They think this has covered any criticisms about non-native species or invasive plants getting where they should not be (see comment by MycoKat here).  But it is not as simple as that.  For example, white birch is native and common in forests about 150 miles east of Ithaca, NY, where I live, but it is not found in the forest around Ithaca. If those seeds were used in their boxes, would those boxes only be used for shipping to eastern NY and not central NY?  I doubt it.  Humans have this tendency to superimpose their mental image of a map on the landscape, and it rarely matches the ecological reality that has been in place for centuries.

Let's assume you now have the seed of a tree species that is truly native to the exact location where you live.  But then, where do you put the darn thing?  You can always plant a tree in your front yard.  Nothing wrong with that.  That tree can be appreciated for its beauty for decades, and it produces oxygen and sequesters carbon dioxide during its life just like the next tree.  But this has nothing to do with regenerating a forest.  If you were interested in helping out our forests, I guess you might plant the thing next to or inside an existing forest.  But that is really unnecessary.  Forests produce plenty of seeds from the trees that are already there and don't benefit from our putting one more seed in the ground.  Evidence of the abundance of forest tree seeds can be found in your gutter every year, when you clean out the maple, ash, and elm seeds that have blown in there.  Squirrels and blue jays are moving nut seeds around the forest and planting them all the time.  Let nature do its thing.  It knows more than we do anyway about where to put these propagules.

So where should you put tree seeds if you have them?  I suggest putting them where they are really needed; put them where there is absolutely no forest at present, but in a location where there WAS once a forest that contained the species of trees you are about to plant.  An abandoned lot in a city would be a great place to undertake such a project, assuming there is still viable soil there.  That is, create a forest, however small, where there was not one before (or, at least, not in a very long time). Or what about an area that was once mined for some commodity, where the vegetation was skimmed off the surface of the earth for miles around?  That area needs help.  These examples would be true efforts at restoration.  Abandoned hayfields or meadows rarely need this kind of help; seeds from trees in nearby forests will find their way there.

My point is that planting a tree sounds as American as apple pie.  What could be wrong with a wholesome activity like that?  But this "movement" has all the characteristics of a program that makes us feel good without accomplishing anything substantive for the environment.  As a conservation biologist, we don't need more trees, we need more habitat.  And habitat, whether it is forest, or prairie, or marshland, mostly needs protection to develop on its own.  Only then will it contribute to viable populations of biodiversity, as well as provide all those "ecosystem services" like carbon sequestration that are so important.

Natural mortality in deer: the inescapable comparison to humans

(An adult female Columbian white-tailed deer marked with an ear tag and a plastic collar for identification in the field.)

For my Ph.D. research I studied a population of white-tailed deer located on a national wildlife refuge in southwestern Washington.  The refuge was situated on the north bank of the mighty Columbia River and this particular subspecies of deer is called Columbian white-tailed deer.  They were placed on the Endangered Species List in the early 1970s, which led to my research project on this rare form of North American deer.  The only other form of white-tailed deer that is considered endangered is the diminutive Key Deer of Florida.

As you all know, most populations of deer in North America are subjected to sport hunting every fall.  Historically, hunts allowed for male-only kills, but this has been greatly liberalized in recent decades to allow hunting of females to reduce the size of this now abundant (= too abundant) species.  One of the demographic observations about deer populations is the sex ratio of adults---it almost always favors females significantly.  Sex ratios among adult deer typically are 3-4 females for every male, and this is generally attributed to the fact that males are hunted and females are not.  That is, more males were removed from the herd every year due to legal hunting than were females, and this resulted in a skewed sex ratio favoring females.  Reproductively speaking, this is not a problem because most species of cervids (which include elk, moose, and caribou) have a promiscuous breeding system, where each male breeds with as many females as possible.  An adult male white-tailed deer can breed with 10 or more females during a single breeding season in the fall, so the skewed sex ratio does not inhibit reproduction at all.  Essentially, all females get pregnant every year regardless of the sex ratio.  Larger, older, and more experienced males probably obtain more copulations than younger, smaller, and less experienced males and, therefore, the larger bucks sire more offspring.

So, I had at my fingertips a non-hunted refuge population of deer to study, and I was free to choose the research questions that were of interest to me.  I decided that this was an opportunity to study natural mortality and demography in this population of about 200 deer found on a somewhat contained (i.e., surrounded by water or habitat not used by whitetails) piece of land of about 2,000 acres.  I lived on the refuge and worked on the population daily for two years.  At the end, an interesting demographic pattern emerged, which informed my view of what makes male mammals tick.

My primary method of studying this phenomenon was to systematically search the refuge with my assistant, Bill Half Moon, for dead deer.  When we found a carcass, I estimated the month in which it had died, its location on the refuge, and I collected the skull for later analysis.  This analysis involved removing a tooth, and staining and sectioning the tooth to reveal cementum annuli that can be counted to determine the age of the animal at time of death.  It is sort of like counting tree rings.  Of course, the sex of the deer was easily determined from the skull as well.  If the carcass was fresh enough, I took it to Oregon State University to be necropsied, and to determine the cause of death.  I also cracked open a femur to examine the bone marrow, which can be scored subjectively for fat content, which is a crude method of evaluating the nutritional health of the deer at time of death.

It turned out that in this population the sex ratio among adults was still 3-4 females for every male.  However, we knew that the sex ratio at birth was nearly 1:1; in fact, there were probably slightly more males born than females, a typical pattern in mammals.  That is, the sex ratio started out about equal, but by the time males and females were two years old or older, there were many more females than males in the population.  We knew that males were not leaving the refuge, or emigrating, so the only other explanation for the skewed sex ratio was mortality.  Between birth and adulthood, males died at a younger age than females.    Males, on average, were living about 3.5 years, while females were living an average of about 6.5 years.  The oldest male skull I recovered was 7.5 years old; the oldest female skull was 13 years old.  In other words, males were cycling through the population at a faster rate than were females.

To put it bluntly, males are just more reckless than females. They get hit my cars, they get caught in barbed wire fences, and they drown in ponds more often than females.  But the most common cause of death in males was their poor physical condition immediately after the rut, or breeding season.  In this population, the rut began in November and lasted about two months.  At the end of the rut, we are in the middle of winter when conditions are not conducive to recovering body condition, and males paid the price.  It is known that adult male deer spend so much time and energy locating and tending females in heat during the rut that they lose significant body weight.  They increase physical activity during this important process and they decrease the time they spend feeding.  The result is that males are worn out and emaciated come January, all because they want to make love to as many females as possible.  In fact, you could say that many males literally mate themselves to death.

The similarities to other mammals including humans is inescapable.  The mortality rate of male humans is higher than females, especially among those just entering age of reproduction.  Males take dangerous chances, largely in an attempt to increase their status in the eyes of females, whether they know it or not.  The winners can win big, with multiple mates during their life and the possibility of siring many offspring.  Of course, modern contraception has changed the outcome of this male behavior somewhat, but our behavioral tendencies produced over the past 4 million years of human evolution continue to play out regardless.

(See full citation and an Abstract of the monograph produced from this research.)

Memories of the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya

My first evening in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya was spectacular.  I will never forget that night.  We stopped the safari vehicle as the sun was setting.  It was during the famous mammal migration, and we were surrounded by wildebeest in all directions, as they stopped moving for the night.  The grunting sounds of this interesting animal could be heard everywhere.  I will never forget those few hours.

Our guide, Meshak, a local Masai.  He knew the birds cold.  Also, my two safari-mates from the UK, who were on their honeymoon.  When I got married, my wife and I went to Niagara Falls--ugh.






A large bull elephant, who appeared to be asleep.  I love this savanna habitat.  Visibility is fantastic.

Male olive baboon eating a baby Thompson's gazelle, which he just caught.  We were close enough to hear the crunching of bones as he ate.  Baboons have always scared me.  Short, robust, and strong as hell.

The main reason you go to the Mara in August or September is to see one of the most amazing wildlife spectacles on earth--the migration of wildebeest, zebra, and Thompson's gazelles.  Here they are crossing the Mara River on their way to Tanzania.  They will return to the Mara in about six months, as they follow the greening of the grasses, their primary food.

Some of the river crossers are not so lucky.  They get picked off by Nile crocodiles, which the crocs let lie around for a couple of days to decompose a bit.  Then, the carcasses are easier to tear apart and eat.  Here, a vulture (I believe an African White-backed Vulture) is feeding on a dead wildebeest in the croc pantry.

We saw two wildebeest picked off by crocs, which grab wildebeest from beneath as they are swimming the muddy river.  The mammal is pulled under the water, where it drowns.




A croc lying by the side of the Mara River.  You could see a couple of dozen crocs at any one time during migration.  The mammals always cross at particular sites along the river that are conducive to jumping into the water and getting out in one piece on the other side.  And that is where the crocs congregate.  Everyone seems to know what the game is about.

I always thought that the Iron Man competition should occur right here.  If you can swim to the other side and back, and survive, you win.




Some of the "winners", making it to the other side.  There are mostly wildebeest here, but you can see at least one zebra in the mixed group.

Death seems to be everywhere at this time of year.  This wildebeest did not even make it to the river, and was probably killed by lions.

A warthog peeks out from behind a tree.

Female cheetah and her sole surviving cub.  It was thought that the other cubs had been killed by lions or hyenas.  I almost got to see this mother chase a Thompson's gazelle, their main prey here.  But the cub ran up to the mother as she was stalking the gazelle, and alerted the gazelle, which ran off.  The mother immediately turned and barked sharply at the cub as if to say, "Stay where I put you when I am about to hunt if you want to eat!"

The female later killed a "tommy", and presented it to the cub for investigation and food.  "You see, this is what we are after".

A small herd of Thompson's gazelles.  Everything likes to eat "tommies".

The colorful women of a Masai village.

The men are pretty elegant as well.  Young Masai boys usually attend 5 years of "warrior" training.  But our Masai guide was sent to an "English" school where he learned to be a wildlife guide.  Is this like college prep vs. trade school training in American public schools?

A lioness who, along with another female, had just killed a zebra.  She is still hot and panting.  Notice how she blends into these dry savanna grasses.

The dead zebra had not even been fed upon yet.  I think the lionesses were simply too tired and too hot to eat.

A Defassa waterbuck, one of many species of antelope found on the Mara.

Wildebeest, as far as the eye can see.








I will never forget the two days I spent in the Masai Mara, and I hope to return one day soon.  North America once had a wildlife spectacle similar to the incredible phenomenon of East Africa, when bison were numerous and migrated across the plains of the Western U.S.  That wonder of the animal world ended in the 1870s.  Let us hope that the large mammal populations of Africa remain viable for generations to come.

Birds in June

(Robin's nest in a Syringa.  Why are the eggs of the American robin blue?)

I spent an hour this morning appraising the avian situation in my forest.  Male singing has changed over the past month in an interesting way.  Species that were quite vocal earlier in May are now fairly quiet, but others are singing constantly.  Dark-eyed juncos, chipping sparrows, song sparrows, black-capped chickadees, wood thrushes, all the woodpeckers, white-breasted nuthatches, eastern phoebes, American robins, gray catbirds, and blue-headed vireos are relatively inconspicuous now.  I assume that the frequency of bird song is correlated to the stage of the nesting cycle.  Males sing to keep other males at arm’s length and to attract females.  When the male or female (usually the female) is incubating eggs or tending nestlings, males tend to be quieter.  I am sure this is to avoid attracting predators to their territory, where the nest is located.

But other species are quite vocal.  Ovenbirds, red-eyed vireos, great-crested flycatchers, eastern wood pewees, and veerys are still waking me up early in the morning.  Because they returned from migration later than the group of silent species, some of whom are year-round residents, these late arrivals may be further behind in their nesting chronology.  If they are mated, then they must be at an earlier stage of the nesting cycle.

Some of this can be documented.  The phoebe nest hatched five nestlings about three weeks ago, and they are now working on their second brood of the season.  By the way, I covered this bird in a blog several weeks ago.  It turns out that this pair nested on a window ledge on the back of my house rather than on the light fixture on the front.  The chickadees that I described last week are now incubating eggs.  And I found a nest yesterday of an American robin in a Syringa shrub next to the house with four eggs.

But let’s review songbird nesting chronology a bit.  Males establish territories, sing, and, if fortunate, acquire a mate.  One or both adults build a nest, which is distinctive to that species (i.e., mud, moss, grass stems, twigs).  Bird nests are truly marvels of the animal world.  How birds actually build these structures amazes me constantly.  During this stage, they copulate, which is done by the male hovering in flight above the female; their cloacas touch, sperm is transferred, and voila. When the nest is complete, the female will start laying eggs.  Egg-laying occurs early in the morning, and the female lays only one egg per day.  Even the famous while leghorn chicken, which has been bred to do nothing but produce and lay eggs, can only lay one egg per day.

Clutch size varies from about 3-6 in temperate species, but the number is relatively fixed within a species.  One of the parents, usually the female, then begins incubating the clutch after the next-to-last, or penultimate, egg is laid.  Eggs do not begin developing until the heat from the female’s body is applied during incubation.  The last egg laid, which occurs one day after incubation starts, will hatch about 24 hours after the rest of the clutch; this “runt” of the litter is often the one not to survive because it is always one day smaller than its siblings.  Incubation takes about 10-14 days, depending on species, and then the real work begins.

One or both parents must then find food, and I mean a lot of food, to feed the hungry nestlings.  These morsels usually consist of insects or other invertebrates, which are high in protein.  Nestlings fledge from the nest after 10-12 days.  For large birds like hawks, incubation and the nestling period are about three times as long as for small songbirds.  If you have never found a nest of a small bird and followed it, you should do so.  The rate at which nestlings grow is truly astounding.  You can see the difference in size and feather development every 24 hours.  But here is a puzzle.  Those nestlings have to defecate several times per day, and yet you will see no feces in the nest.  Where is it?

Will you cause the adults to abandon the nest if you find it and check on it up close once or twice a day?  It depends.  If the adults are only at the nest-building stage, they may abandon that effort and relocate because they “think” a predator has found the nest.  Why continue if something is going to eat your eggs?  But once they have reached incubation stage, they will usually not abandon the nest.  Too much time and energy have now gone into that nest to just walk away.  So find an active nest, observe it until the babies fledge, and report to us here.  There are worse family activities in which you could be involved.

Once the young have fledged, many males will begin singing all over again in the hopes of attracting a new female who wants to nest.  And on it goes, throughout the ages—the stuff of which poems are made.

On the importance of homemade strawberry jam

(Scotch and homemade strawberry jam.  A nearly complete diet for DrTom, leading to order and homeostasis.)

There are certain stabilizers in our lives that become absolutely essential to our feeling of order and homeostasis.  For some, it is finding the morning paper on the front porch by 7am every day.  For others, it is that hot cup of organically grown Cafe Britt coffee about mid-morning.  And for still others, it is watching the Yankees play on tv during the summer.  One of mine is having a single-malt scotch and a cigar in the evening, something I have discussed many times.  It is during that hour or so that I contemplate the day's activities and life's memories--of children and grandchildren, of gardens and plantings growing around my property, of former students who left an impression.  I am counting on having those memories until senescence and lack of eyesight completely take over and all I can do is pet the dog or the woodchuck, or whatever that furry thing is that is lying at my feet.

But there is one other stable element in my life-homemade strawberry jam. Most years, my wife and I visit a local farm where you pick your own strawberries.  We bring them home, clean them up a bit, and my wife makes jam.  That's right.  Women make the jam, men mow the lawn.  This division of labor has worked pretty well for centuries, so far be it from me to change it.  But this year, my wife couldn't pick berries because she had some eye surgery the day before and was instructed not to bend over.  So, I went to the berry patch alone, wearing my white head band to keep the sweat from rolling into my eyes and sporting an Aussie hat.  Bending over those raised beds of berries is tough on a "mature" body like mine, so I found that actually lying down in the narrow row next to the bed worked best, and then inching forward as I depleted the ripe fruit that was close at hand.  No one else in the field was using this technique, possibly because it looked like I was a Navy Seal crawling up the beach to surprise the enemy in Mogadishu.  I didn't care.  It was more comfortable than bending over, and this color-blind naturalist needs to be close to his work to find red berries easily.  I picked 20 pounds and went home.

When I got home, it became clear that my wife was busy preparing for guests who were arriving the next day, and the chore of making jam would pretty much fall on the now ex-Navy Seal.  Amazing how some men can lay aside their M-16 and grenade launcher after a successful mission in the berry patch to don an apron and to manipulate a canning jar in the kitchen.  But on this day, that is what I did.  

As my wife barked instructions, I snapped to attention.  Clean fruit, cut it up, and mash until you have 5 cups.  Put in pan on stove, add a pat of butter, and one box of Sure-Jell.  Bring to a boil.  Then, add 7 cups of sugar.  Bring to a rolling boil for 1 minute.  Remove from heat.  Skim off solids on top of liquid.  In the meantime, I had a very large pot on the stove containing boiling water and the jars, lids, and rings.  Steam everywhere.  Lots of heat in that part of the kitchen.  This is why old farmhouses used to have a summer kitchen to do this kind of work.  Remove the jars, fill with cooked jam, wipe off the rim of jar with a hot, wet paper towel, place lid on top, and screw on a ring.  Then place all the filled jars back into the water bath to boil for a few minutes.  Two fingers and 1 thumb now burned.  Remove from heat, set on table, and enjoy the sound of those lids snapping down into place as the vacuum inside the jar takes hold.  As one batch is finished, begin the assembly line for the next load of fruit.  Two more fingers burned.  Keep going.  Don't stop or slow down, or you will find something else to do.  It is hot, sweaty work, but someone has to do it.  It is essential work, because we are talkin homemade strawberry jam--nectar of the Gods, sweet memories, winter morning comfort.

I made 20 pints of jam, so this should last until next June.  But my wife has a tendency to give our jam away as gifts.  And our grandchildren are always asking for "Grandma's jam".  But not this year.  Because I labored over the brew, I now hold the keys to this year's supply.  I love my grandkids, but all that sugar is probably not good for them.  And little kids need to learn that life is not always fair.  And maybe they are allergic to red things.  That you don't always get what you want, when you want it.  And that "Grandma's jam" is sometimes "Grandpa's jam".  And Grandpas can be stingy.

So, toast with strawberry jam in the morning, and a single-malt scotch and a cigar in the evening.  Throw in a couple of vitamin pills, and I suppose this is a nearly complete diet leading to order and homeostasis.

Our grown children are having all the fun

(Would you rather go birding at DrTom's, or go dancing with Paris Hilton?)

I thought I was enjoying my life in retirement until earlier today when I talked to my son who lives in Las Vegas.  I mean, I have my gardening, and my forest, a great wife, a good dog (about which Mark Twain said each man deserves one of in his life), some aging friends, and the internet.  But my son was describing to me how he went to what is probably the most beautiful swimming pool in the world this week, how he goes to after-parties that are even after the usual after-parties, and that he is so busy chumming with celebs that he barely has time to sleep.  For example, last night he walked into a Japanese restaurant, saw one of his bosses across the room, and went up to the guy to say hello.  Only then did he realize that the man was having dinner with Paris Hilton, who he is dating.  (Of course, the two of them are not having such a good week now, given their arrest due to that "stuff" Paris had in her purse.)  In contrast, this morning I met with some students who were graduating from Cornell.  We met at the annual breakfast under a tent on the lawn in front of a decaying 100-year old building, where I ate half a bagel slathered with cream cheese.  Something is wrong with this picture.

Until today, I thought that hearing a Tufted Titmouse singing in my woods was pretty exciting.  I thought that anticipating the first bloom of a day lily behind the house was stupendous.  I thought that going to Punk's Place in Candor, NY on a Saturday night to get a reuben sandwich was rewarding.  I thought that eating a radish I grew in my garden was miraculous.   But when I think about my party-going, snowboarding, cave-exploring, topless-pool spectating, Texas Hold-em playing sons living under the clear Western sky I'm not so sure.  What the heck was I doing when I was young?  I was married with children, in debt, in the Army or in school trying to educate myself for the good life that was to come.  And what do I have now?  A pithy radish and bird poop all over the place.

So just now, this very minute, I made a commitment to myself.  DrTom will do something at least once a week that can stand up against the social reports of his kids.  For example, this fall we can attend the Candor Senior High School football games.  That marching band of theirs is supposed to put on a pretty entertaining half-time show.  Instead of just listening for birds on my place, I will start turning rocks over for salamanders.  There must be a whole world I am missing by always looking up.  I'm not going to just grow radishes in my vegetable garden; I'm going to try some pak choi.  And that Kama Sutra book that has been sitting in the drawer next to our bed needs to be dusted off.  We use it to press flowers between the pages.  But there are actually some interesting pictures in there.  Management and I need to study those.

So kids, just wait until you call us next time.  Ryan, I won't just be killing tent caterpillars on my fruit trees by squishing them between my fingers like I was when you called today.  I'll be doing stuff.  Lots of neat stuff.  Stuff so neat that you'll want to spend every vacation here at home instead of hiking the high peaks of Colorado or dancing at fancy clubs with those girls who star in Cirque du Soleil or going to comedy clubs with Jarvis Green (the Broncos' new defensive linesman) or going to Cancun for tequila tastings. You might even start bringing people like Paris Hilton, or Alex Rodriguez, or Leonardo diCaprio with you because they have all heard that Danby is now the place to be seen, not Vegas.  And Danbyites are discreet about what celebs do here.  Cause you know what everyone is saying these days: "What happens in Danby, stays in Danby."

On Roger Maris, baseball, and heroes

(There are lots of memories associated with this baseball card.)

I was absolutely consumed by baseball until I was about 13.  I played on a Little League team, I practiced pitching in front of a full-length mirror in my home, I watched games on tv incessantly, and I collected baseball cards.  At the end, I had 3,333 baseball cards, mostly from the 1950s, which my mother overlooked in the basement when she moved from my childhood house.  I never saw them again.  Oh Mom!  Because of this addiction and the data on the back of the baseball cards I had memorized, I knew nearly every stat about every player on nearly every team.  In 1958, one set of stats I committed to memory was the following: right fielder, batted left, threw right, born in Hibbing, MN, rookie year with Cleveland Indians.

Roger Maris only played for the Indians during 1957-58, the first year of his famous career.  He was traded to Kansas City in 1958, and then to the Yankees in 1960, where he played with Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra.  But even in his first year as a pro, there were high hopes for Maris, who later hit 61 homers in the 1961 season, breaking Babe Ruth's record that had stood for 34 years.  So Maris was already one of our heroes among my baseball-loving comrades on the northwest side of Lima, Ohio.  His Rookie Year baseball card of 1958 was hot within trading circles, one of those prizes where you instantly threw away the gum inside the package as soon as you saw the "Roger" and the Indians' uniform.

In those days, it was a common field trip for boys' groups at school to go to a professional baseball game.  Given where I lived, the trips usually went north to an Indians' game in Cleveland; on occasion, we got to travel south to a Redlegs' game in Cincinnati.  The cost of a ticket was about $2, and the stands were never even a third full back then.  (Many years later, I thought I would take my family to a Blue Jays game when we were visiting Toronto.  We walked up to the stadium at game time and were promptly told they had been sold out for weeks.  And if they had tickets, it would probably cost our family of five about $150.  I was in disbelief.  I don't remember reading that stat on the back of a baseball card.  I guess I had been out of touch with my childhood game for a long time.) 

So it was sometime in 1957 when the group of boys (it was always only boys) with which I was traveling headed to Cleveland for a game.  I can no longer remember who the Indians played that day or who won the game.  Our excitement was focused on the habit of congregating around the outside door on the back of the stadium where the players emerged after the game and their showers.  If you were lucky, and the players were in an accommodating mood, they would stand there for a few minutes and sign autographs.  After one of those games, I remember an angry Mike Garcia emerging into the light and the throngs of baseball-loving boys only to shove us aside and to stomp his way to his car, signing nothing.  He had pitched badly that game, and he was bringing his work home with him that day.

But the highlight of my baseball celebrity memories was the day that Roger Maris and Al Smith walked out among their faithful disciples.  We rushed to get their signatures.  I got Al Smith's right away, and he had hit a home run that day.  Then I jumped over to the Maris crowd, and eventually worked my way to a position right in front of the guy.  He signed my baseball program.  But the immense pressure of all those young male bodies was incredible, pushing me forward well within the personal space of the soon-to-be famous ball player.  It reminded me of the feeling I had at the Pussycat Dolls' concert I attended at Cornell last year outside on the lawn.  Students pressed so hard toward the stage that I had to get out of there.  I staggered toward the edge of the crowd as best I could, inadvertently groping students of both sexes.  I was embarrassed at the looks I got, but it was not my fault.  I wanted to scream that I have been married to the same woman for 41 years, and I'm the father of three grown children, and I have peripheral neuropathy so my balance is not so good, and I am not a pervert.  But no one would have believed me.

So to extricate myself from the crowd of autograph seekers around Roger Maris, I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl out of there.  I swear to whomever you believe, I crawled right between his legs to escape!  It did not seem that weird to me at the time.  I was desperate, I couldn't move, and I was not big enough or strong enough to push my way out of that mess.  So I saw daylight about 18 inches above the ground and I went for it.  I was successful.  I escaped intact with the guy's autograph, which was worth significant bragging rights for many months after.

Men like Maris and Mantle were a big deal to boys like me.  We had little chance of becoming famous or of mingling with the famous, so our brief moments of encounter with them were worth a lot.  Those brief moments gave us something to talk about back home, and made watching them on tv even more magical than it would have been otherwise.  They were heroes to us in every sense of the word.  Maris' autograph, for which I was so proud, was written in pencil.  That signature later faded badly on the glossy paper of that baseball program, which disappeared along with my baseball cards.  But the memory of that day is still very fresh in my mind.

Those men informed our dreams and kindled our imaginations, in spite of any personal problems or improprieties they might have suffered off the field.  I think Bob Costas, the sports commentator par excellence, said it best.  Although he was referring to Mantle, I hope his sentiment still applies to many stars who young people emulate today:  "In the last year of his life, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally came to accept and appreciate the distinction between a role model and a hero. The first, he often was not. The second, he always will be. And, in the end, people got it."

Does touching a bird's nest cause the female to abandon it?

(Male Bobolink.  The male usually helps at the nest, but the female does most of the work.)

Did you grow up with your mother telling you not to touch that robin's nest because the mother would not come back and the babies would die?  Most of us did.  This has to be one of the most frequently uttered adages in all of nature lore.  The fact is, this is mostly myth.

During the 1980s, Eric Bollinger and I studied Bobolinks in upstate New York.  Bobolinks are a polygynous (i.e., males commonly have more than one female mate) species in the blackbird family.  The males have an incredibly long, bubbly song and their appearance is described as having  a tuxedo on backwards.  They are about the size of a sparrow.  Bobolinks build their grassy nest on the ground.  The female lays one egg per day until she has completed a clutch of five, begins incubating with the laying of the penultimate egg (next to last), incubates the eggs for 10-12 days, and then feeds her nestlings for another 10-12 days until they fledge.  Males usually help feed nestlings, but they are not as attentive as females.

Eric and I and our technicians located hundreds of Bobolink nests in those years, which are built on the ground in hayfields and meadows.  Once we located a nest, we placed a bamboo stick in the ground about a meter away from the nest with some colored plastic flagging on the top of the stick so we could relocate the nest at will.  Once found, we checked the contents of the nest every day to determine its progress and success.  When the nestlings were about 7 days old, we removed each one from the nest, collected a blood sample, measured it, placed an aluminum band on one leg, and returned it to the nest.  In some years, we removed the eggs and measured them before returning them to the nest.  In other words, we disturbed the nests a great deal during their three-week life, although we were careful not to trample the concealing vegetation around the nest any more than absolutely necessary.

Nearly 1,000 nests endured this harassment, and Eric and I learned a great deal about the behavior of  females because of it.  If we found a nest while the female was constructing it, she usually abandoned the nest.  If we found the nest when she had laid only 1-2 eggs, she often abandoned the nest.  Once the female had laid her full clutch of eggs and began incubating, she almost never abandoned, and if the nest contained nestlings, she would absolutely never abandon her brood.  The same seems to be true of most other birds as well.

Think of it this way: the more the female had invested in time and energy in the whole operation, the less likely she was to give it up.  Remember also, most birds have only a limited seasonal window during which they can successfully complete the nesting cycle.  In the case of Bobolinks, it takes a total of about 30 days from initiation of nest-building to fledging of their young.  In addition, they continue to feed their fledglings after they leave the nest for some period of time.  Bobolinks do not return from South America until early May and they start moving south again in August.  If they had to start over with the nesting cycle part-way through, they would barely have enough time to get those babies to a size and age where they could endure a long migration at the end of the summer.

Realize that the patterns I have described above probably apply to most songbirds in North America.  They may not apply equally well to tropical birds, which live in an area with many predators, and which always seemed to me to be extremely wary of predation threats.  Those species might abandon their nests more readily than temperate species.

So when your mother or grandmother tells you not to touch that nest because the female will not come back to it, you can say: "Well Mom, it goes like this".  There is a danger of attracting predators to a nest that you have disturbed, and where you have presumably left your scent.  Raccoons are very good at following these clues.  But as far as the female of the nest is concerned, she has invested too much for too long to walk (well, or fly) away easily.

Motivation: what you need to learn Korean

(Bored soldiers.  I knew that feeling so well.)

By the fall of 1969 I had completed my training in Military Intelligence in the U.S. Army at Ft. Holabird, MD and was awaiting orders for my first duty station after graduation.  We were all nervous because this was during the heaviest years of fighting in Vietnam and most soldiers were sent there, regardless of their specialty in the military.  The Tet Offensives in 1968 and 1969 were massive and bloody, and they were on the mind of every GI.  So my wife and I were on pins and needles waiting for the orders that would determine the next direction of our lives.

On the day in question in late August, I was about to play a tennis match after duty-hours for the Ft. Holabird team against another military base. One of my friends on the court yelled at me about whether I had gotten my orders today.  We had, in fact, gotten them, but I had not had a chance to talk to Robin about them.  But Robin heard the question, jumped to her feet and marched across the tennis court directly over to me, balls flying past her head in both directions, and demanded to know if I had received orders.  I told her not to worry; I was assigned to go to language school in Virginia.  How bad could that be?

So in September, I began Korean language training in Arlington, VA at a new complex of high-rise buildings called Crystal City.  That area is so developed now that I couldn't even find the building where I spent so much time when I visited a couple of years ago.  The Defense Language Institute was contracted by the military to teach languages to military personnel in this place as well as on the west coast at Monterrey; they taught over 50 languages there.  There were three Korean classes to begin that month, and I was assigned to the class of Mr. Cho.  All instructors were native speakers of the language they taught.  Each class contained 10 GIs, where we sat in a straight line in school-like chairs with a desk top in a very small room with our instructor.  Our instruction lasted 7 hours per day, 5 days per week, for 50 weeks.  I can hear the audible groans from the peanut gallery now.

The class was tedious, and we had to do some studying at night to memorize the dialogue for the next day.  We learned to speak, read, and write the language.  There was a great deal of oral work during each day's class, as we were randomly called upon by Mr. Cho to answer his questions in Korean, or to translate what he had said.  We learned about Korean culture, history, food, music, and geography.  We received a pretty good education in all things Korean.  But, the room was small and sterile, you looked at the same nine guys every day, all day, and the educational routine was just that-a monotonous routine.  In short, it was the most boring year I ever spent in my life.

But the alternative was scary and so most, but not all, of us stuck it out.  Every Friday we had an exam on that week's work.  If you failed the test three weeks in a row, you flunked out of language school and you were reassigned.  Reassignment almost certainly meant going to Vietnam.  In fact, when Mr. Cho got totally frustrated with us, which he did often, he would say in his broken English: "You study hard, or you go other place".  And that "other place" in Southeast Asia was a place none of us wanted to go.  So we plodded along, week after boring week, hating the boredom, but hating the idea of what lay ahead if we faltered even more.